


Part 35: Justin

by oiuytrewq36



Series: Let's Hear It for the Boy [9]
Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:33:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26793694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oiuytrewq36/pseuds/oiuytrewq36
Summary: I wake up with a headache, sore and stiff and- alone?I sit up and look around. Brian’s not in bed, which is a little strange, considering the amount of liquor we both ingested last night at Emmett and Duncan’s anniversary party. I weigh my options, then get out of bed - slowly, so as not to jar my throbbing brain too much - and put on a pair of his sweatpants from the floor.He’s in the living room, leaning back on the sofa and staring up at the ceiling with a blank expression, bouncing his phone in one hand.Uh-oh.
Relationships: Brian Kinney/Justin Taylor (Queer as Folk)
Series: Let's Hear It for the Boy [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1928482
Comments: 2
Kudos: 41





	Part 35: Justin

I wake up with a headache, sore and stiff and- alone?

I sit up and look around. Brian’s not in bed, which is a little strange, considering the amount of liquor we both ingested last night at Emmett and Duncan’s anniversary party. I weigh my options, then get out of bed - slowly, so as not to jar my throbbing brain too much - and put on a pair of his sweatpants from the floor. 

He’s in the living room, leaning back on the sofa and staring up at the ceiling with a blank expression, bouncing his phone in one hand.

Uh-oh.

I sit next to him, sliding an arm around his shoulders. “Everything okay?” It definitely isn’t, but he’s more willing to talk when he thinks I can’t tell that something’s wrong.

He spends a few more seconds studying the lighting fixtures, then faces me. He holds up the phone. “My mother’s dead.”

I want to pull him into my arms, touch his face the way he does to me when I’m sad, but I have a feeling that’s not what he needs right now.

Instead, I take the phone and set it down on the coffee table, and then cover his hands with mine. “Are you okay?”

He presses his face to the side of my head and nods. I’m expecting some snippy response about how he doesn’t care, how she doesn’t deserve it, a standard piece of the slowly-dissolving Kinney armor, but instead he just says, quietly, “I didn’t even know she was sick.”

I thread the fingers of one hand into his hair, pulling him closer against me. “What was it?”

“Liver failure,” he says, and huffs, a little shakily. “Surprise!”

Brian puts an arm around me, so I tug him a little closer, my torso resting against his, and he sighs, soft, tired-sounding, and slides his forehead down to the juncture of my neck and shoulder.

“Lindsay called,” he says, “a few hours ago. Claire called her, because she knew I wouldn’t answer if she called me.”

I kiss his temple. “And you’ve been up since then?”

He nods, eyes closed.

Standing up, I take his hand and pull him to his feet, as gently as I can manage. 

“Come back to bed,” I tell him, as he leans against me. “We can talk more when you’ve slept.”

He smiles, very faintly, and follows me towards the bedroom.

“You’re much better at taking care of me than I am,” he murmurs, when I tuck us into the blankets. 

I wrap him up in my arms, warm and tight, and brush my lips over his. “You do a lot,” I say. “I can handle this one thing.”

He gives me that pale smile again, and for a second I think he’s going to say something, but he’s asleep against me a few moments later.

***

Brian wakes up at past noon. I’d slept for a little and then woken up again and just studied him, imagining new ways I might paint him, soaking in the solid warmth from his long beautiful body. I’m thinking about how I’d capture the way his chest rises and falls as he sleeps when he blinks awake, smiling groggily at me, and I know that for this moment he doesn’t remember what’s happened.

I can’t bring myself to tell him, so I just snuggle down closer to him in the warm blankets and let him draw me into a deep silken morning-breath kiss. 

Then he pulls away and looks at me. “My mother’s dead.”

This time I do take his face in my hands. “Yeah.”

“Fuck,” he says, closing his eyes. “And Claire’s begging for my help with the funeral, according to Lindsay.”

I just stroke his hair, not sure what to say. 

“Do you think I should help?” he asks, eyes lonely and frightened. I hold him tighter. “Claire doesn’t have the money to hold a big Catholic funeral, and-”

“You don’t owe them anything,” I say. “Well, except for a lot of Freudian emotional fuckery.”

He laughs, the first real smile I’ve seen today on his face, and kisses me on the nose. “And I haven’t talked to any of them in ten years.”

I nod. “They’re no more your family than- than Reagan, or Stockwell, or-.“

Brian kisses me, cutting me off. “Okay, then,” he says. “I don’t owe them anything.”

He has a strange expression on when he says it, though, and it worries me, enough that I don’t want to leave him alone. I brush his hair back off his forehead and say, “Why don’t you work from home today? That big canvas upstairs is driving me crazy, and I’d love to be distracted by some capitalist propaganda.”

He smiles at me, the soft loving look in his eyes that still makes me feel seventeen again, and I know he knows exactly what I’m doing. 

“I’ll call Cynthia,” he says. “Tell her I’m letting you coddle me for once.”

I kiss his cheek, and he pulls me on top of him, holding me close. 

“As long as I’m not going into work,” he says, my favorite sexy smirk starting to creep over his face, “I might as well wait on the call too, don’t you think?”

I grin back and start kissing down his chest, feeling him relax under me for the first time in hours.

***

We spend the day on the living room floor, taking test shots of eco-friendly toothbrushes for a new brand that Kinnetik just signed. After a few hours, I get bored and start building toothbrush log cabins on the coffee table while Brian watches, laughing at my concentrated expression.

But as the afternoon sky starts to pink through the plate-glass windows, I can see the darkness starting to fade back into him. He’s withdrawing into himself, voice growing flatter, looking through me instead of at me.

He stands up. “I need to make some calls.”

I look him right in the eye, but he’s completely unreadable right now. “Don’t go too far, okay?”

The pale thin smile is back as he kisses me on the forehead before turning away. “I’m just going up to the deck,” he says. “I’m all right.”

I watch him leave, wondering if I should go after him. But his shoulders have a determined set to them that holds me back, so instead I pace the living room floor for forty-five minutes, thinking. When he still hasn’t come back after that, I climb the stairs to the second floor and open the doors to the deck, the summer evening air ruffling my hair.

Brian’s looking out at the city from our big bench seat. “I was wondering how long it’d be before you’d come check up on me,” he says, not turning around.

I sit next to him and lean into his side. “I just want to- support you, however I can.”

He smiles and kisses my hair. “I know.”

Gesturing to his phone, sitting dark on the table, I say, “Do you want to talk about it?”

He doesn’t answer for a long time, just puts an arm around me and rests against me.

Then he says, “I decided to pay for the funeral.”

I turn to stare at him. 

“I’m having Ted wire the money to Claire, twice what she was asking for, so it should be enough to cover the expenses. And then I called the lawyer who’s dealing with the will and rejected whatever she left me, with instructions that the remains of my blood family should never contact me or my friends again.”

He says it in a monotone, gazing out at the skyline. Then he looks at me. “I’m done with them. Forever.” 

“Are you- are you okay?” I ask - ridiculous question, but it seems like the right thing to say. 

“I’m more than okay,” he says, voice starting to quaver, and I pull him closer to me, hugging him tight.

He buries his face in my neck and breathes for a moment. Then he lifts his head, eyes glittering just a little too brightly. “I think I’m free.”


End file.
